A lifestyle change took place when we moved to our smallholding in Wales, we are leaving behind the consumerism of life, growing our food, raising our meat, living our lives to the full, enjoying every day the highs and lows of country living, but not going without just doing it better.

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Tuesday, 6 October 2015

New Equipment

It arrived last week, yesterday was the first chance I got to have a proper look at it.

Its a Cream Separator, I got it in preparation for milking the goats, I know it be be a while yet, but I didn't want to wait until the last moment.

All unpacked its a lot bigger than I thought it would be

All fairly straight forward to put it together, I then stripped it down and gave it a wash.

I bought some full cream milk to give it a try out,

First bring the milk up to body temperature about 34 degrees

then it was switch on the separator pour in the milk, once the pitch changes on the motor, turn the key and skimmed milk comes out the spout o the left and cream comes out the spout on the right

It was so simple, I got just over 2 fluid oz of cream from the milk.

I ordered this separator through Amazon it came from Ukraine, I had been looking in the UK the price was anything from £300 to £700 and I was thinking I wouldn't be getting one, then through a forum I belong to heard about this one from the Ukraine at £115 it had excellent reviews.

Now I have tried it out I cant wait until the goats are producing milk, I have now had a thought, I usually buy semi skimmed milk and buy in for the month, if I buy a month supply of full fat milk and run it through the separator I will have some cream, I can then re-bottle the milk and freeze it as normal. I will give it a try and see how it goes.

10 comments:

There used to be (I don't think my memory lets me down) a little glass British version, with a plastic top which did the same thing. I presume you just let the cream rise to the top and then poured it out? I sold one a couple of years ago at a car boot sale for a couple of pounds I think. Your one would cope with far better quantities of milk though - this would have only held half a pint at most I think! I am sure you will get good use from this.

We had one of those cream separators but we did not get on well with it. We tried in on our goats milk and seemed to waste a lot of milk without getting any cream, plus it was fiddly to clean out. But although it was the same type as yours it was not the same brand so hopefully yours will work better for you than ours did. If yours does work alright then we might buy a similar one. At the moment we scoop the cream off the top of the milk with an ice cream spoon, which works well enough for us, but we would obviously get a lot more cream if we used the separator.

Looking forward to seeing the results you get once you have goat milk,

Looks and sounds fantastic Dawn. I am afraid that we never eat cream. Having got used to eating natural yoghourt with things we now find cream much too rich and it upsets us. But I was interested to see what a small amount of cream you got from each bottle - no wonder it is quite expensive.

looks great Dawn, well done on finding such a bargain. We always had morning milk and would have the first quart off the top of the cooler tank as it was just cream by then and the rest would be milk. If my Granny wanted thicker cream we had it from the big separator, a monstrous bit of kit.

Looks like a bargsin piece of equipment you have there. I'd never given goats cream a thought. Is it popular. Great idea to swap your milk and benefit from the by product. I love full fat milk on cereal but alas middle age prevents me from buying it. ;0)

We had a hand turned one - hopeless! but an electric one worked well, but once we had less goats we didn't have enough milk to make it worthwhile. has it got loads of cones to clean or have they found a new way? We found we need to sterilise everything to stop a buildup of milk stone

Looks a great bit of kit. The eastern Europeans really know their stuff in certain areas. I've been working with some polish guys and learning all about their food and they been brinign it inot work for me to try, been really interesting (and tasty).